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WASHINGTON — I am on the phone with Deb, a customer service representative for a large company whose products I like, but with which I have a current beef. For strategic reasons, I am not yet going to tell you the name of the company. Deb has graciously agreed to respond to a very long question. Still there, Deb?

Weingarten: I have a big question about a tiny pocketBack to video

Me: Here goes. The other day, I was leaving a restaurant and walking to my car. Because my key ring had recently broken due to an accident occasioned by my trying to use it in an unauthorized manner (emergency beer-bottle opener), my keys were all singletons in my pocket. When I arrived at my car, I reached into the pocket. The car key was not there. All my other keys were, but not my car key. Tried my other pockets. Nope.

I was flustered enough to look to see if I had left the key in the car, even though I knew that was impossible, since my car door was locked and the only thing that locks my car door is my car key. I retraced my steps to the restaurant. No key. Went inside, checked the floor around where I sat. No key.

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Back to the car. Checked around it, and then under it, which required a manoeuvre that is cruel for a 63-year-old man. It produced a rather embarrassing crepitation, which is a medical term that describes either the popping and groaning sound of ancient joints, or passing gas. (This is literally true. Medical terminology is cruel to senior citizens.)

No key. Fortunately, I remembered I have a friend who lives nearby, so I walked there and hit her up for a lift. She knows me well enough that she showed no surprise or curiosity over how I had managed to lose my key during a brief walk.

So she drove me home, a distance of two miles. As I got out of her car, she said, cheerfully, “I hope you find it someplace stupid, like your pocket.”

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And that is the point at which I found my key, requiring a ride back to my car.

Do you know where that key was, Deb? Can you begin to kind of suspect what had happened?

Deb: Did the jeans have that little tiny pocket?

Me: Bingo. Readers, I will now tell you that Deb is employed by Levi Strauss. Now here is my question for you, Deb. I have done some research, and this little pocket inside the right front pocket is called the “watch pocket” because the last bona fide use for such a pocket was roughly 1899, before the popularity of wristwatches, which made the pocket watch essentially obsolete. The tiny pocket is so connected to pocket watches that the word “fob” comes from the German word “fuppe,” meaning “a small pocket.”

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In the past 20 years, I have seen only one person actually use a pocket watch. He is an elderly retired editor who also wears waistcoats, and would probably wear spats if he could find them, and always addressed me as “Esteemed Eugene” because he liked the formality of it. I know from personal experience and from anecdotal evidence that — just as the main function of the human appendix seems to be to get inflamed and have to be removed — the main functions of this pocket are to not be able to fish things out of it because it is too small, and, of course, to lose things in.

So, my question to you, Deb: Can you defend it?

Deb: It’s a signature with Levis. A design element. It looks good.

Me: So does the flower of the bloodroot plant. But if you eat it, you will die.

Deb: Is there anything else I can help you with today?

Gene Weingarten is a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer at the Washington Post.

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